I just got it yesterday. I has told myself I wasn't going to get it, as I've only even been disappointed by TES (starting with Morrowind), but I broke down and bought it. Turns out, I was wrong to be apprehensive. They fixed my biggest complaint about both Morrowind and Oblivion (boring combat), and added a very cool level and perk system to boot. The level system present in Skyrim is very similar to the mods I'd install for Morrowind and Oblivion. Basically, it does away with the grinding, and lets you focus on playing your character. They also finally made character models that aren't gagtastic. On the combat. It's very similar to the previous systems, but more intuitive feeling. Easier to use, less clunky, more fast paced. The critical hits are absolutely brutal, glorious, gory, instant kills. They even work on bosses (or at least mini-bosses). It's beautiful. I love hoisting a writhing bandit into the air with my greatsword shoved through their abdomen. I didn't have a character in mind, so I just sort of made one. A redguard lady. Started using two-handed weapons as soon as I found a warhammer. Haven't looked back yet, though I did switch to swords, since they are faster. Tromping around in full plate with an exquisite Skyforged steel greatsword. Just killed my first dragon. Aluran, my Redguard (sans helmet): Which leads me to crafting. It's great. As some of you may know, I love crafting (I almost always play with a smith in DoD). The system in Skyrim is very satisfying.
Got it friday and played a straight 26 hours. Yet... The game disappoints. Its great and big and I will keep playing it but, f*ckdammit, they re turning this into a lame console game. The shitty modern interface, the horrible futura font used makes me puke and makes the game way less immersive. The gameplay has been simplified for dummies, items cant break anymore, armors is now only in 4 parts ( helmet, boots, gloves, torso ), instead of 100 spell there is now something like... 20... I mean Aaaargh seriously. On the other side, the quests are still fun, the world is huge and gorgeous, fights are fun, voice acting is finally Great, there is almost NO bugs ( crashed twice in 30 hours of gameplay ) difficulty is well balanced. And dragons ftw.
Gah that sounds less fun then... I am really wanting to pick it up, but I have no hurry. Last few preorders (HOMM 6 and SOTS2) came out buggy despite being good, so I'd rather wait with the money than without. But dumbing things down, making stuff easier/less convoluted... yeah... guess most people here would be opposed to that
@Brobbeh: The only thing I can say is "consolized" is the UI, which does suck. Streamlining doesn't make it dumbed down necessarily. Although, I admit I prefer having more armor and weapon skills, as in Morrowind. I mean, I don't like playing Morrowind much, but I like the breadth of the skills. I also do like being able to equip an ungodly amount of items (shirts robes, armors, etc). Skill wise, it's the same as Oblivion. The game is far more immersive than Oblivion or Morrowind ever were for me. I actually enjoy the dungeon crawl (there is actually useable loot, unlike in Oblivion!), and find myself losing track of time. I feel more like I'm in the world, as opposed to playing a character in it. The beautiful scenery helps in that regard, I suppose. It still looks like the same engine that Oblivion used, but they've employed it well. It still has some of the same faults, but those are minor so far. My only real problem is that there seems to be some memory leaks. I can play for hours with no problem in most areas, but some rooms/houses/areas cause severe, un-ending lag. Have to restart the game to fix it. It's pretty irritating, but relatively minor. So you may want to wait out a patch, Godwin (I'm waiting a bit on SotS2 partially for that reason). There haven't been any game breaking bugs, and I haven't crashed (though my brother has), but it could still use some tweaking. Anyhow, it's definitely a hack 'n' slash title, more so that Morrowind for sure. If you don't like that sort of gameplay, then you won't like this. I must say, the difficulty level is pretty high for this sort of game. I've actually died a couple of times on mini-bosses. You can die about as quickly as your foes, which is always a welcome thing for me.
Oh yeah, I play in expert difficulty and quite enjoy the difficulty. Some bastards will kill you in 3 or 4 hits if you dont nail them down fast. I agree the skills are still there though i dunno how i feel about the percs system yet. need to play some more dozens of hours before I decide For the loot, i find it quite boring. money, health potion, stamina potion, magic potion. I didnt have this issue in oblivion where the loot was amazing for me, but its probably because I had the Oscuro's overhaul mod which retweaked EVERY dungeon with tons of secrets, details and rebalanced gameplay. It made Oblvion absolutely fantastic. I am complaining but Skyrim is still totally worth buying, and im absolutely sure mods will correct the stuff I have issues with. Bethesda rocks.
Without Oscuro's the loot in Oblivion was trash. Oh my goodness. My first character was a Dunmer thief. Breaking into shops and homes was useless in Oblivion (but very profitable in Morrowind). I wound up turning her into an assassin instead, and had my fun that way. I complain most about the games I love, to be honest. If you can't think critically about something you like, then why bother liking it at all?
I loved Morrowind to bits... it felt so epic and amazing... a whole world to discover. I found Oblivion to have it's moments, but never had that immersion level I had in Morrowind. It sounds strange but decisions in Oblivion, even though you could close portals to the Demon realm, seemed less important to the world than they did in Morrowind. It actually was pretty simple for me: The story was really good in Morrowind, to me anyway. Dark elves and their island were exotic, strange, different. You were a stranger there. That setting was marvelous. While Oblivion was in the heart of the empire... boring? So if it's more hack and slash then roleplay that may be another downside, but if I stop comparing I am pretty sure I will like it for what it is anyway, as opposed to wanting it to be what I want it to be. And mountains should be nice And it's a more interesting province by far then Cyrodil? If that was the name of Oblivion.
Like I said, I feel more like I'm my character than I did in Oblivion. Morrowind too, but I just don't care for Morrowind much. I don't hate it (after installing a leveling mod), but I still don't love it. I haven't been able to play much more of Skyrim, so I don't know how the story is exactly, but the world is more interesting than Oblivion. No gates, for one. For two, dragons. I also like the giants and mammoths. It's neat to watch a group of bandits charge at some mammoths to try to poach the tusks, only to be slaughtered by their giant herders. If I ever get a chance to play more, then I'll let you know what I think of the campaign. Right now though, I've been running around clearing random bandit strongholds, dungeons, and doing a few quests for the Companions. I almost never do the campaign right away. In fact, I came across a bandit stronghold last night, and cleared the outer fortress in a matter of seconds. Charging through battle from one foe to the next, sprinting up steps to the battlements, leaving a swath of destruction. Yeah, the combat is awesome. I swear, I had tunnel vision. Didn't see anything but the next bandit ready to die on my sword. xD Couple of screenshots from 'funny' moments: About to die to some mammoth herders. The first dragon I killed, along with the second. Both within view of Whiterun. I agree that your actions in Oblivion seemed to have a negligent effect, by the way. Have you played the Shivering Isles expansion? I've found that people who enjoyed Morrowind tend to enjoy the Shivering Isles expansion. The atmosphere was great, and the story line was actually interesting. I still hated the combat mechanics, but it was very enjoyable. I need to find some sort of mod to make running take no stamina in Morrowind. The amount of time it takes to walk everywhere is killing me. That's probably the only thing keeping me from enjoying Morrowind right now. Yeah, I never beat Morrowind, even though I bought it right when it came out. It just bored me, and I never felt like pulling up mods.
I ve never finished any of the elder scrolls, and I ve played all of them since Daggerfall : / Probably because I tend to avoid Fast travel, because I like to be "roleplay" and walk my way everytime. Man, you destroyed a bandit stronghold in seconds ? This is very very far from my experience in Expert difficulty. Have to be so careful with each battle, yesterday I got a critical finishing strike from a bandit while I had 75 % of my health... Maybe that s why I dont finish the games either.
I'm playing on normal. The only time I play on a higher difficulty on my first time through is on first person shooter titles. I'm not going to say I'm particularly good at them, but that is the genre I've played most, and for nearly two decades now! I have been walking nearly everywhere though. I usually only fast travel if I am escorting someone, or if I am just trying to buy crafting ingredients. This is the first TES game where I haven't minded walking. It is worth noting, since I am using two handed weapons, most foes die in one or two normal hits, let alone power attacks, or criticals. I have enough stamina now to where I can sprint, and power attack, and still have enough left to do that a few more times. I've tried playing Daggerfall and Arena, but the controls are so clunky. I have a hard time even attacking, let alone surviving long enough to win.
Good ol' Daggerfall. Its the game that scared me the most. It was so freaking buggy, that at some point, everytime I loaded my game in a specific dungeon, the dungeon would be filled with ancient vampires ( one of the most powerful ennemy of the game ) everywhere. Once just BEHIND ME. I escaped from the dungeon completely freaking out from their howling coming from everyfreakingwhere... Gosh. I still tremble in fear. Great game otherwise, but outdated indeed. Too many bugs anyway.
Skyrim is amazing, and while I do wish Bethesda catered more toward PC (hello direct x 10/11 support plz) it's one of the best games I've played this year (Top 3 is probably Skyrim/Dredmore/BF3 for me). I actually love the layout of the ui, it's a bit consoley but the effects are good. Needs more keybinds and less tweaks required on the pc user's end. Relying on your fanbase to fix .ini files is mildly dumb... real hard for me to help my less hardcore pc friends. I agree with what you said about the dungeons, each has its own story and is really well thought out and laid out. Oh and items not breaking? Is that really fun for you? Cause I'm willing to bet it was pulled because it's not a FUN game mechanic, not because they think people are too stupid to handle it. It's just NOT fun at all! Fallout's system is lame too but it's better than repairing with money. To me this takes the best of TES and mixes it with their successful bits from Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Whilst removing most of the bad. It's really an amazing play.
Well yeah its fun for me. I like these kind of realistic details and not feeling like an invincible god in a dungeon: The longer I dwelled there the more tough it d get, my health getting lower and my stuff getting slowly ruined. Basically dungeons had a more "survival" feel to it. The same way I like the survival aspect in rogue likes. Makes you appreciate a lot more when you find a potion of healing instead of having 329 in your inventory and not using them because you regenerate automatically anyway. I mean what s next ? Remove the weight capacity of your equipment because its not fun to have to throw away stuff ? Limiting the player is what forces a more deep gameplay instead of going for an arcady, brainless hack and slash. Im not saying skyrim reaches that point yet, but its going towards that.
Weight capacity alone is kind of silly. I actually prefer inventory Tetris, along with weight. But I also like picking up everything, so it doesn't bother me. Also, I'd say that any degradation system for armor and weapons is unrealistic. It's equally unrealistic to never have to maintain weapons and armor, but I think it's a heck of a lot more fun to never have to mess with it. This is all down to personal preference, of course. @Unipigdog: I don't think the UI idea is bad, I think some of the implementation is clunky. I like how quick you can access some things, and it's still better than Morrowind's UI (so clunky). I think I'd be more forgiving if the stupid thing wasn't bugged, and I could actually use the favorites list. Looks like I may have found the solution to that, though. Seems like a key bind issue, which I expected.
Well in my experience thus far playing on the harder modes requires you to pull out all the stops for most encounters. There's plenty of fun things to do there without worrying about a repair gold sink or some nonsense that takes the player out of the fun parts of the game. Perhaps a better plan would have been an option to have realistic repairs required as well as perhaps a food/water system where you need to remain fed / hydrated regularly throughout the game. I rarely get to the point where I have a massive stockpile of the potions I really need in fights, usually they're used up relatively quickly. These systems can always be gamed though, I played the survival mode on fallout new vegas and it was kind of a joke/way too easy.
Yeah I wish food was actually used to satisfy hunger as well. They had a mode for that in Oblivion but it was sucky. I do have one bug with the keybinding I cant avoid: When I want to dual wield a stack of 2 of the same one handed weapon, it keeps losing the binding because when you equip one it unstacks them and the game considers each weapon as a new item. If you find a way to avoid that...
